The concept of “small plates suitable for sharing”–which is becoming increasingly popular in New York City restaurants and “gastropubs” these days–seems oxymoronic to me. A portion designed to be divided and conquered by more than one person should, in fact, be larger, not more diminutive, than the average serving. And it should consist of multiple bite-size pieces on a single plate, so that forks can attack it from all sides. Otherwise, someone is bound to feel embarrased about turning a beautiful-looking dish into an unappetizing mess or, even worse, cheated because he or she has gotten the smaller half.
Most of the time, my husband (and most frequent dining companion) Michael and I share everything we order, whether or not it’s officially sanctioned by the restaurant. We carefully eat 50 percent of all elements including sauce and sides, then switch plates. We did this not too long ago at Centrico with an appetizer of tamal de huitlacoche, a fat cigar-shaped tamale made with the Mexican delicacy huitlacoche, a fungus that grows on ears of corn and considered by South-of-the-Border chefs to be as precious as truffles. It tasted like an earthy, smoky corn cake and no matter how emphatically I told the waiter that I liked it, he didn’t believe me, because the plate he had delivered to my side of the table was in front of Michael 10 minutes later. Let it be known that I wasn’t passing off distateful fungi on my mate. I was simply sharing with him the taste sensation. Honest.
I recently sampled a perfect-for-sharing dish at Recette: crispy razor clams– five fingers of crunchy, chewy, briny sweetness. Dipping (and double-dipping) these morsels into a ramekin of spicy red chili compote and popping them in your mouth is a fun activity to share with table mates–and that’s what the experience of dining out should be. The only problem was cutting that last finger in two. One of us made a mess, the other wound up with the smaller half.